We are applying a hotfix today to all level 1-60 dungeon quests for Kalimdor and Eastern Kingdoms dungeons which will significantly reduce the amount of experience they award.

While dungeons should remain integral to our evolving storylines, and great places to collect gear in cooperative environments, we need to make sure each player’s questing progress remains relevant as dungeon quests are completed. In many cases we’re seeing players enter dungeons to complete quests, only to come out ahead of the leveling curve for the zones they’re in.

This change should allow players the opportunity to reap the benefits of running dungeons, while not outpacing the leveling flow from levels 1-60. At this time there are no plans for making any adjustments to dungeon quest experience for Outland, Northrend, and level 80+ Cataclysm dungeons.

This really does get the best of all worlds.

Yesterday when I suggested that instances shouldn't give experience, I left out a group, specifically players who like to play in groups, in other words, people who prefer to level through instances. Removing kill XP in instances would have ruined the game for them. Instead they'd be entirely in solo situations. Oh sure sure, they can group up for quests, but quests aren't really designed for multiple people: they become trivial (even more so) and there's no simple mechanic to encourage grouping (no quest finder tool), in addition to the XP drop with two players compared to 3 or more. So I still think that instances giving XP is excessive, but it's also necessary. Nerfing the quest XP isn't as big of a deal with this grouping group, since they'd be in there many times and the quests are one-time deals.

This works out well for the questers as well. We're unlikely to run an instance more than once, though I did do WC twice because I was put in a partial instance with a quest boss dead. This means that for us, quest XP in there is a huge portion of total XP from an instance run. Nerfing that will cut out the total XP by a lot as well, so we aren't getting 1-3 levels from a single instance run. That means we can still quest and still run instances, since we also want to do the quests in there as well.

All in all, I think it's a great change. It's simple (though I imagine quite boring and repetitive for the guy who has to go to each instance and pick each quest and change it, not that I'm saying that the devs work by running around the game world, as cool as that would be). It's effective. It won't cause all sorts of weird unexpected problems like we'd find if they had made the XP requirements higher or tried to tweak group XP bonuses.

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I goofed and didn't turn in the quests in WC after downing the final boss, I just ported out. Those quests were still in my log, though, and worth a fair chunk of XP and a boot upgrade, so I resolved to find my way to WC solo and just turn in the quests. (Since I love exploring and running a Dwarf to WC sounded like a fun challenge, it seemed more seemly than going to the dungeon via the Finder again.) At level 19, those quests would have been over half the XP for the next level, so that sweetened the pot a bit.

...much pain, time and a few deaths later, one to a trio of Horde players, I found my way to the Wailing Caverns... and dinged 20 killing critters getting to the instance. I'm not sure if it was that or the XP hotfix, but when I turned in the quests finally, they were about 1/4 the XP they were when I forgot to turn them in.

I guessed I just straddled the change between the initial run and the solo expedition. No sweat, really, since both the group run and my grand adventure were both fun, but if I were just after the XP, dungeon quests aren't nearly the draw they were previously.

I know I felt like I was levelling extraordinarily fast just doing random dungeons on my Troll Hunter. Levels should be something you look forward to. I really didn't like feeling it was like a chore to go back to my class trainer constantly, rather than being excitement at gaining new skills.

[Although maybe the huge amount of "Track a slightly different thing than before!" skills the Hunter class chucks on you was a contributor to that.]